The Syrian Charity Scam - CovertAction Magazine
Americans want to feel good about themselves by giving money to charities
that claim to be helping the Syrian people.
But they are being duped into supporting terrorist forces that have brought
misery and violence to the country—while crippling U.S. sanctions accentuate
the humanitarian crisis.
Are major charitable organizations supporting terrorist organizations
through tax-deductible donations while denying aid to those they claim to
serve?
Doctors Without Borders, the Syrian Emergency Task Force, the International
Rescue Committee, the Syrian American Medical Society, the White Helmets,
Syrian Forum USA, Islamic Relief USA, CARE, the Syrian American Council, and
other major tax-deductible charities all advertise that they are providing
humanitarian aid to Syrians. Their ads appear in Facebook, Twitter and other
social media on a regular basis. But their aid is not reaching 6.5 million
displaced and needy Syrians in Syria.
Some of the international charities do excellent work in other countries,
but in the small portion of Syria where they provide services and supplies
through proxies, their work is under the control of al-Qaeda affiliates and
their aid is directed primarily to the fighters and their families.
This is the case for both medical services like Doctors Without Borders, and
for delivery of food, medical and other relief supplies, hoards of which
have been discovered in massive quantities in terrorist headquarters after
removal of the terrorists. The civilians in areas formerly held by the
fighters report that they often had to pay extortionist sums to get services
or supplies.
Donate for Syria – Australian Syrian Association Victoria
[Source: asavic.org.au]
The vast majority of displaced persons are in government-controlled Syria,
where U.S. siege sanctions do not permit international organizations to
distribute aid through Syrian charitable organizations such as the Syrian
Red Crescent, the Syrian equivalent of the Red Cross.
The U.S. claims that humanitarian aid is exempt from the sanctions, but they
permit aid to enter these areas only if the foreign charity distributes the
aid through its own personnel (paid or volunteer). But very few
organizations are prepared to create their own distribution system inside
government-controlled Syria, and those who cooperate with terrorists
fighting against Syria are not likely to be welcome in those areas.
In fact, only four U.S. charitable organizations can operate in most of
Syria. The largest of these is the International Medical Corps, which
provides medical aid throughout the world. In Syria it addresses
psychosocial trauma, hygiene, malnutrition, and the COVID-19 pandemic. It
provides personal protective equipment, and infection prevention and
control, but not vaccines. Although it diagnoses malnutrition and reports
that it is widespread, there is no indication that it provides actual food,
perhaps for fear of violating U.S. sanctions.
The other three are tiny. One is the Adventist Development and Relief
Agency, operated by the Seventh Day Adventist Church. It is authorized to
operate in Syria, but there is no indication that it is currently doing so.
Its website reports only that the organization offers aid to refugees
through its office in Serbia.
Another is SAWA (“together” in Arabic) the Syrian-American Women’s
Charitable Association, based in Washington, D.C. It is also authorized to
operate in Syria, but serves mainly the refugee population outside. The only
aid inside Syria reported on its website is to support another organization,
al-Mubarra, to provide clean water to refugees returning to Syria.
The remaining U.S.-based 501(c)(3) tax exempt charitable organization is the
Syria Solidarity Movement, a small California-based nonprofit that helps
needy Syrians on an individual basis through volunteers.
Its aid includes shelter, medical procedures, economic self-sufficiency and
similar measures for destitute Syrians. Separately, it also advocates for
human rights, including respect for Syrian sovereignty and territorial
integrity, an end to U.S., Turkish and Israeli occupation of Syrian
territory, and the lifting of all sanctions against Syria.
A person sitting on a bed
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Paraplegic ambulance driver receives physiotherapy provided by Syria
Solidarity Movement. [Source: syriasolidaritymovement.org]
More than 30 other international relief organizations, mostly from Europe,
also operate in government-controlled areas of Syria. But most are small and
not well known, despite the important work that many of them do with often
scant means at their disposal.
The best known is probably Oxfam, based in the UK, but it is an exception in
terms of size and effectiveness. United Nations agencies like UNHCR and
UNICEF also provide relief under conditions limited by the sanctions.
Better Together: Partnering with diaspora organizations for Syria | Oxfam
Oxfam distributing aid in Syria. [Source: oxfamamerica.org]
If you have responded to appeals for donations to help Syrians, you have
probably learned that almost half the entire Syrian population have fled
their homes due to the fighting and destruction since March 2011. The
appeals have described the suffering, malnutrition, homelessness, disease,
exposure and desperation of the population.
Get involved: Save Syria's Children appeal - The Imagination Tree
[Source: theimaginationtree.com]
Unfortunately, these appeals come primarily from organizations that have no
intention of helping the majority of this needy population. Why? Because
this majority fled to government-held areas, never left Syria and chose not
to live under the “protection” of terrorist organizations and their Turkish
allies in occupied Idlib province and small portions of Aleppo province.
This means that the Syrian government, Syrian civil and charitable groups
and the exceptional international organizations operating in government
areas had to take responsibility as best they could for these displaced and
desperate persons even as major Syrian agricultural and petroleum resources
were being confiscated by the U.S. military and draconian sanctions were
destroying the Syrian economy. These organizations did their duty and
distributed the increasingly meager resources as best they could, but they
had no help from most of the organizations that appeal for your donations.
Syria is suffering like few other places on earth. Although in 2010 it was
largely self-sufficient, with no debt and healthy exports, that now seems a
distant memory. The war is a main factor, of course, but the U.S. is
confiscating (stealing) most of Syria’s oil and much of its agricultural
production. Worse than all of this, however, have been the crushing economic
sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies.
A picture containing person, young
Description automatically generated
Six-year-old Ghazzal Khudeir’s father died fighting terrorists and her home
was destroyed. She and her mother and two brothers were homeless until the
Syria Solidarity Movement got a small apartment for them. Millions more face
similar circumstances. [Source: Syria Solidarity Movement]
Social and medical services and education, including university, are free to
all Syrians, but the sanctions have severely affected Syria’s ability to
deliver those services. Even its once strong pharmaceutical industry cannot
import the necessary components to make medications, and its hospitals
cannot get replacement parts for medical devices.
The U.S. theft of Syria’s oil is crippling both income and the
transportation sector, and its currency has dropped to one-fifth of its
former value because the sanctions forbid most banking transactions with
Syria. Syria cannot even repair many of the homes destroyed in the fighting,
due to a lack of building materials.
The economy is in shambles and the 9% unemployment rate would be much higher
if not for the flight abroad of millions of Syrian citizens, many or most of
whom would prefer to return home if their country were free of occupying
forces and crippling sanctions.
Syria war: New US sanctions target Assad government's foreign backers - BBC
News
Protest against U.S. sanctions policy in Syria. [Source: bbc.com]
Where are your donations going? Some become aid to Syrian refugees that have
fled to other countries. But in many cases, they end up in occupied Idlib,
where accountability for the funds is tenuous at best. Idlib has seen a
transformation of its traditional population in the last decade.
As al-Qaeda affiliated fighters armed with vast quantities of sophisticated
U.S. weaponry (e.g., TOW missiles) began to inflict unsustainable casualties
on the Syrian defenders, most Idlib natives fled to other parts of Syria
still under government control, emptying the area of its original
inhabitants.
In their place came a new population from two sources. First, the large
numbers of radical foreign mercenaries began to bring their families from
the countries where they were recruited, with the encouragement of the
Turkish government and the international alliance that is attempting to
install a Salafi/Wahhabi government in Damascus.
Second, as the Syrian army began to turn the tide and retake its territory
with the help of its Russian, Iranian, and Lebanese allies, the Syrian
government offered the opposition fighters the option of a) amnesty and
reintegration into Syrian society or b) safe passage to areas not yet under
government control, mainly Idlib.
The first option was open only to Syrian nationals, so the second became the
choice of many foreign mercenaries as well as some diehard Syrian opposition
fighters. This is how Idlib came to be populated by a dizzying array of
al-Qaeda affiliates speaking a diverse group of languages and dialects, only
one of which is Syrian Arabic.
Members of al-Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra in Idlib Province, Syria.
Members of al-Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra in Idlib Province, Syria. [Source:
cfr.org]
As the territories held by the non-Kurdish Syrian “opposition” shrunk to
less than 3% of the total area of Syria—mostly Idlib province—so did the
size of the population they served, probably less than a million, with a
large percentage of non-Syrians.
Furthermore, the control of that territory was split among hundreds of
al-Qaeda affiliates of different sizes, each of which usually refuses access
to international aid agencies in their mini-realm. As a result, the
charities came up with a protocol that paired them with local opposition
partners (aka Civil Service Organizations) registered in Turkey, many of
them organized into an umbrella organization called the Syria Relief
Network.
Text
Description automatically generated with low confidence
[Source: reliefweb.int]
These opposition CSOs act as proxies to deliver the aid through
intermediaries that are trusted by the opposition groups. Baytna Syria is
another organization that facilitates meetings in Turkey between the local
proxies and the armed groups in order to arrange the protocols and logistics
for the aid to be delivered to them at their camps within occupied Syria.
Baytna Syria” responds to the article published in the Turkish newspaper
«Yeni Shafq» – المركز السوري للإعلام وحرية التعبير Syrian Center for Media
and Freedom of Expression
[Source: scm.bz]
The protocol was described in early 2017 in “Localisation and cross-border
assistance to deliver humanitarian health services in North-West Syria: a
qualitative inquiry for The Lancet-AUB Commission on Syria,” which gives a
good picture of the situation as it was in 2016. By 2021 the players had
changed and much of the territory was back in government hands, but the
description still quite accurately reflects the “remote monitoring” of aid
administration, with two or more degrees of separation between the
international charities and the recipients.
This leaves accountability opaque at best for aid distribution, and at worst
significant skimming by the intermediaries and the governing councils of the
recipient groups. As the report says, “some local charities that claim to
focus their work on orphans or widows actually only cater to orphans and
widows of opposition fighters.” And even when the aid goes to its intended
population rather than to intermediaries, to what extent is it helping needy
Syrians rather than immigrant populations from other parts of the world?
Syrian refugees, mostly Kurdish, recently arrived in the semi-autonomous
region of Iraqi Kurdistan pictured at a reception and registration area near
the town of Faysh Khabur. Aid was handed out at the reception area by the
UN, Iraqi Kurdish authorities a
Aid is not always going to the neediest people. [Source:
thenewhumanitarian.org]
In sum, the main international charity organizations are doing nothing to
make things better for most Syrians, and their appeals for funds are
misleading, since they fail to state that they do not operate in most of
Syria. They do not transparently acknowledge in their appeals that they only
serve small portions of Syria under the rule of al-Qaeda and its affiliates,
or that some of its “local partners” have strong connections to the
terrorists and that a significant portion of the population served is not
even Syrian.
Sadly, this is what we have come to expect from “charitable” organizations
that function at the behest of U.S. interests. Even when they provide needed
aid, they do so only when it also serves U.S. hegemony in territories of
interest to U.S. foreign policy. Furthermore, some get huge government
grants but barely provide aid at all.
The White Helmets, for example, have received considerably more than $60
million. These funds are primarily for operations, liaison, legal counsel,
administration, public relations and film production (propaganda), news
feeds to networks and publications, and similar activities. Even their
rescue work has been directed primarily to the fighters and their families.
Such organizations must therefore be considered allies of, or adjuncts to,
the “rebel” fighters that the U.S. supports with lavish military aid that
typically gets used by terrorist groups that the U.S. claims to be fighting
but which the U.S. tacitly supports if they are against the Syrian
government.
Image
U.S.-funded White Helmets assist in public execution in rebel-held Syria.
[Source: twitter.com]
Regrettably, the U.S. perceives the death, destruction and destitution of
the Syrian people to be a desirable part of its campaign against Syria. The
irony is that, by devoting billions of U.S. dollars of taxpayer money to
create misery for Syrians, it also denies its own citizens the use of these
funds for their benefit, bringing misery to them as well.
